


Hell of An Appetite - single scene

by Mab (Mab_Browne)



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-16 19:52:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16501679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mab_Browne/pseuds/Mab
Summary: A short scene from an unfinished work for the TS Chat concrit challenge.  Jim isn't successful in dealing with the current monster terrorising Cascade.





	Hell of An Appetite - single scene

**Author's Note:**

> Like the summary said, part of what will end up being another story for my Hell of a Town series if it gets finished. For now, it's just the Concrit Comm excerpt.

Down the alley all was quiet. Dark also, to any unassisted human eyes, but not to his. There came a crackle and a rustle, the noise of garbage caught in the wind. Newspaper sheets, the foil that wrapped potato chips and candy bars, the plastic sheeting that wrapped pallets sometimes, the clatter of an empty plastic coffee cup across the sidewalk. All of it merged together and something rose in the alley before him. Dirty bone skull that was long of muzzle and sharp toothed, dark cape, all shaped out of the city’s detritus. It stretched out a hand and an avid light blazed in the sockets of the skull.

Jim should run.

No… he should distance speak, join with the rest of the bait… his fellow officers… he should….

“Me?” he asked without words.

“You’re hungry,” sounded in his head. “I can feed you.”

It swooped, and the shock of it unleashed Voice. He called out in fear, raising the alarm, as he was wrapped in a trash shroud and lifted up, high above the street, above his home.

“Look at it all,” came into his head. “You can have all of it, eat all of it, devour until you’re full.”

The others were with him now, strength rushing into him rather than presence, but it was no good. This wasn’t their monster, only a drone sent out on an errand. He pushed into the depths of it, the fetid decaying tang, but there was nothing there. They were boxers fighting rounds against the smog.

“He eats,” whispered in his head. “Eats you all up, you could do the same, have all of him, and more. All your city, all yours, keep it safe inside…”

With a cry of revulsion, Jim tore the amulet from him. It dropped away, too small to make any sound, too slow for even Jim’s ears to catch the noise of its landing and then he heard, “Not hungry enough.” It was disappointed, and final.

The sense of enclosure turned to sickening exposure. Jim fell, some of the detritus around him falling with him, some of it fluttering above him on currents of wind that were no use to him. He looked down at the roofs and street below him, grey and angular lines that were the last things he was ever going to see. The strength that the others had given him might keep him from death when he hit something solid; probably not though, and he was not resigned, he was not, not to dying this stupid, helpless way.

Just a second or two for all of this to flash through his mind, and then there was the shock of impact, only sideways, the loss of breath like a punch, and a whirling, dizzy disorientation. Motion settled into something steadier and a lot more upright, and he stared into Blair’s face. “Well, you told them it was a fucking stupid idea and you were right. Damn it, Jim!” Blair was breathless, and his face twisted with fury. A good part of it would be for Jim Ellison going along with the stupid idea despite his misgivings. 

Jim tucked his face into Blair’s shoulder and mumbled, “You can yell at me on the ground.”


End file.
